


I'm Holding On Tight To You

by butimaloneandfree



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Frozen 2 spoilers, Movie: Frozen 2 (2019), barely any mention of kelly/alex but it's there in like one paragraph, really its danvers sisters, there's nothing worse in here than is in the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21550156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butimaloneandfree/pseuds/butimaloneandfree
Summary: Alex and Kara and the rest of the Arrowverse go to see Frozen 2, which is fun until that scene hits a little too close to home.Inspired by tumblr user stranger-who-writes-fiction 's short fic where the crossover goes to see Frozen 2 (in costume). Which is much happier than my fic and I highly recommend. But I couldn't help but think that Alex and Kara would see a little too much of their sisterhood in this movie.Slight AU where Monitor has given Kara the same warning as Barry, and I don't watch the other shows so bear with me if I got any of the other characters wrong. (Mostly focuses only on Alex and Kara).HUGE FROZEN 2 SPOILERS. You've been warned.
Relationships: Alex Danvers & Kara Danvers, Alex Danvers/Kelly Olsen
Comments: 5
Kudos: 61





	I'm Holding On Tight To You

Kara’s having a great night. The world is about to end but for once they get to just be _friends_. Not super-friends, just regular, normal friends. Nothing super about them, except maybe how super funny the image of a scowling Oliver Queen wearing a floor length ice blue gown is. 

Kara’s always liked _Frozen_ well enough. She always liked Disney to begin with; she’s a musical fan and the simple stories about (usually) orphans finding a happy ending had been reassuring for a girl who had just lost everything. Plus, when it came to _Frozen_ , “Let It Go” was particularly catchy.

Then, a year after the movie came out, Kara had come out as Supergirl and suddenly she understood Elsa a little bit more. Using her powers to help people brought her the same relief she imagined building an ice palace and Olaf had brought to Elsa. Elsa had found her place where she could be accepted with her powers, and it had given Kara hope that there was a way to reconcile both Supergirl and Kara Danvers. It meant a little more to her now.

So yes, Kara was excited to see _Frozen 2_ , and so far she is over the moon with how much fun she is having. Her life is so strange, that getting to do something as mundane as seeing a movie on opening night at the movie theater is thrilling.

“Psst. Kara.” The whisper is quiet enough no one else can hear it over the sound of the movie.

Kara looks around. Three seats down, Mia is pointing to Alex’s popcorn bucket. Kara nods, and then with a burst of superspeed Mia has a handful of Alex’s popcorn. Mia mouths a thank you, and as they share a conspiratorial grin, Kara has to bite back a giddy giggle from spilling out.

“You’re fast, but even you aren’t fast enough to pull one over on me, Kara.” Alex sounds serious, but in the flickering light of the screen Kara can see her fighting to keep a smile off her face.

“Careful, or I’ll tell Kelly that your heartbeat speeds up every time Elsa comes on screen”

In all truth, both their heartbeats are speeding up every time they see Elsa, but Kara isn’t going to tell them that.

Alex gasps in fake astonishment, and throws popcorn at Kara. This time Kara’s giggle does spill out, and someone behind them shushes her.

“Sorry!” she whispers, but it only makes Alex join in on the giggling.

The movie’s good, so far. The “our cobblestone streets might be destroyed” stakes are a nice change of pace from the “humanity will be mind controlled” and “multiverse could be obliterated” stakes that Kara’s had to live with lately. “Some things never change” is catchy, and when Olaf sings “and you all look a little bit older” directly to them, Kara’s heart catches in her throat as she thinks about how far she’s come in the past six years.

She and Alex had gone to see the first movie back when Kara was still in her first year as an assistant for Cat Grant. Alex had been late because she’d been held up by a ‘meeting’ at the ‘office’ and they’d walked in halfway through a trailer for _The Nut Job_. It makes Kara laugh, now, that she had ever believed Alex worked at an office job.

Sure, some things never change, but a lot of them do.

Now, Kara’s a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist sitting with the greatest heros in the multiverse, and they’re not just her coworkers but her friends. She’s enjoying watching them almost as much as she’s enjoying watching the movie.

Oliver is fighting _so hard_ to keep the scowl on his face, but when Mia puts her head on his shoulder and whispers about how much he loved her fun facts phase, he melts like ice cream.

Every time Elsa uses her ice powers, Barry nudges Caitlin, until finally Caitlin hisses that if he doesn’t stop she’s going to let Frost out right this second and she’ll show him just how cute ice powers can be. Barry just laughs.

And as much as Kara teased Alex for her heart eyes at Elsa earlier, she can’t miss that Alex looks over at Kelly every time Kristoff tries (and hopelessly fails at) proposing.

The parents ship reminds Kara a little too much of all the deaths she’d spent years imagining for her parents, and she closes her eyes for a minute to picture Argo City and her mom very much alive after all these years even if sometimes she still has trouble thinking of her mom as alive. The Nokk and Show Yourself take her breath away and she’s able to put that discomfort behind her as she feels her heart swell with the music.

Life is good.

And then Elsa goes too far. She’s too heroic, too full of hubris, she doesn’t look before she leaps and her last breathy “Anna” sounds a little too much like “Alex” for Kara’s comfort. And Elsa freezes to death in a scene Kara knows must be a ‘cinematic masterpiece’ or something but Kara’s too distracted by Alex’s racing heartbeat next to her. She _knows_ , in the way only sisters can know, the memories that are running through Alex’s head right now. Memories that Kara got to miss, knocked unconscious by an explosion or a supervillain or kryptonite or occasionally a fifth-dimensional imp. Times that Alex remembers in her nightmares and Kara only knows the slightest details of because while they talk about everything they don’t talk about the too many times Alex has had to almost watch Kara die.

Alex is stiff next to her, and when Kara instinctively offers her hand on the armrest, Alex grabs it. Kids are crying and parents have tears in their eyes, but no one is crying harder than Sara Lance and Alex grips Kara’s hand a little tighter. Kara is left cursing the fact that every movie lately has to be dark and full of death and she just really wishes they went to a rom com instead. This movie was supposed to get them away from the Monitor’s warning, not force them to confront it in a way they’ve been avoiding doing for over a week now.

And now Olaf’s gone and Anna is left sobbing, alone, and Kara is all too familiar with the pain in her voice as she sings about how this grief has a gravity because Kara is the survivor of a dead world and no one seems to remember that. She has always been the sister with powers, but she is also the sister with grief, who has to _chose_ every single day to be ‘sunny Kara Danvers’ and optimistic Supergirl, and Kara, who has always identified with Elsa more, feels her heart fill with pride at how far Anna has come, and even a little bit how far she herself has come. In Anna’s darkest moment, Kara finally understands her.

The music crescendos into something beautiful and heartbreaking all at once and Kara is lost in the sea of lights and song and emotion until suddenly Alex is gone, forcing her way past the rest of the row towards the exit with an urgency that makes Kara wonder if she missed an alert over the coms because even on movie nights the DEO doesn’t have out of office emails or vacations.

“Alex!”

Kara chases her, handing Mia the popcorn on her way out, and bursts into the empty hallway, readjusting to the brighter lights and softer noise and realizing that Alex is standing there, between the doors to theaters seven and eight, sobbing.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do any of this.” Alex is spiraling like Kara’s never seen before and with all her powers Kara can’t slow the heartbeat that she hears racing faster and faster.

“Alex it’s going to be okay. It’s just a cartoon. And it’s Disney, I’m sure they’ll find their way to a happy ending.”

“I can’t lose you, Kara!” Alex shouts. It echoes on the patterned carpet, and there it is. The elephant they’ve tiptoed around with empty platitudes and forced smiles for the past week, since the Monitor threw it into their lives.

“It’s not about the stupid snowman!” Alex wipes the tears from her eyes. “I don’t care if they get a happy ending! Where’s ours? Where is the end of all of this? When will you have saved the world enough that I don’t have to keep watching you die?”

Kara doesn’t know what to say. There’s nothing anyone can say to prepare you for loss, she knows that firsthand, keeps learning it over and over again. ‘It’s going to be okay’ sounds empty when she knows it probably won’t.

“Come here” Kara says, and Alex falls into her arms, her sobs muffled against Kara’s cardigan. Kara’s eyes water but she doesn’t let the tears fall because she knows that while dying might be hard, living is harder, and if the Monitor is right then it’s Alex who will be standing in Anna’s shoes soon. Kara makes a promise to herself then and there, that even if it means her death, she’ll finish the job. She’ll save the earth first, because she might not be able to save Alex from loss, she can at least save Alex from having to be strong.

“You know, the movie got one thing right” Kara starts.

“What’s that?”

“How some things never change, like how I’m holding on tight to you.”

And they hug each other harder, because maybe this isn’t be a Disney movie where love solves everything, and maybe they won’t get their happy ending, but even when the world is crashing down around them warm hugs make everything feel just a little bit more okay and Kara understands why Olaf likes them so much.

And maybe this movie wasn’t such a mistake after all, because there, in the deserted hallway of a movie theater, Kara holds tight to Alex and thinks of how much about sisters that movie got right.


End file.
